Whether you are a new artist just trying to break into the art market or whether you are an experienced professional artist, learning art marketing is paramount to the success of your art business. Understanding art marketing and how to market your art will give you a huge competitive advantage when competing against other artists.
So what are some of the art marketing techniques and art marketing strategies that you can use, if you are just starting a career as an artist or whether you are an experienced artist?
1. Find new clients by starting with the people you know. Make a list of everyone you know and start simple. Write their name, address, phone number, and email address into an excel spreadsheet. When marketing your art, contact each potential client at least three separate ways to let them know about your artwork. For example email, Facebook, postcard; or letter in the mail, an invitation to your show, email; etc.
2. Network with these people and ask them for referrals of other people that they believe would be interested in your art. Get as much contact information as you can such as name, phone number, email address, and snail-mail address.
3. If you invited them to your art show, after show, follow up with your current clients by thanking everyone that came to the show or anyone who purchased from you with a thank you card, make sure that you include a business card also. For the clients that purchased from you, it is a great idea to include a free gift as a thank you for purchasing from you.
4. You also want to follow up with the referrals that your clients gave you. You do this the same way as you did previously with your clients. Contact them 3 separate ways with 3 different media. For example:
- a. 1st send them an introductory letter explaining who you are, and who referred you and include some samples of your work. The samples can be as simple as photos, brochures or even a catalog of your art.
- Send and email- inviting them to your blog post, where they can learn more about you.
- Send an invitation and then personally call them and invite them to your next art show.
5. When marketing your art, it is important to continue to repeat the first four steps over and over again to grow your database of prospects and of clients. Once somebody gives you a referral, ad them to your spreadsheet or database and stay in contact with them. And remember to always ask for referrals when marketing art.
6. Now another important aspect of art marketing is managing your database of clients and prospects by segmenting your database so you don’t burn your list out. Burning out your list is when your clients become unresponsive to you, because you have contacted them too many times, or made too many offers that were not relevant to them. This is more of an advanced topic, so don’t worry about this too much, if you are just starting your career as an artist.
7. Finally, it is important when marketing art to have a means of selling art when contacting prospects and clients. This can be done through a website, over the phone, in person over lunch or dinner, through email, direct mail, brochures, and catalogs, or any other means of you asking for the sale and then being able to process the payment.
This article appears courtesy of the Art Marketing Institute and Charles George.
